


Between pages (between sheets)

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Affection, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Light Bondage, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:45:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7593124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I found it in the library, in our library - it's full of the filthiest things, and I think that we ought to try every single one of them."</p><p>Elizabeth discovers a book brimming over with interesting ideas, and James is only too willing to indulge her curiosity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between pages (between sheets)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snowbryneich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowbryneich/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Here is a truth (here is another truth)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997478) by [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft). 



> Sequel to the above linked fic, but can be read as a standalone.

"I am told," Elizabeth says, perched neatly in his lap with her nightdress hanging open at the neck, "that this is perfectly normal and acceptable."

James is at a loss, because he cannot imagine telling anyone anything about what goes on in his marital bed, and can imagine even less being told what ought to go on here.

"The mechanics are much the same," Elizabeth says, leaning forward and pressing her hands into the pillows on either side of his head. "Just upside down."

She  _does_ make an absolutely devastating image, all sun-gold and linen-white with the tangle of her unbound hair falling around both their faces, smelling a little of salt and a little of her perfume but mostly of the oil and powder her lady's maid uses to set it for such parties as they threw tonight.

She is drunk - her eyes are bright with it, her mouth red - and beautiful, and James wants to give her this, truly he does. He wants to give her the whole world, if he can.

But he doesn't know if he can, if only because the idea of her sharing anything about their marriage bed with anyone outside of their marriage horrifies him, just a little.

"Who did you ask about... this?" he says, blushing to hear the rumble of his voice that they both know is as much a hallmark of his readiness to oblige her as his cock swelling between them. "I do not think it would be appropriate conversation over tea and crumpets, Elizabeth."

She laughs, ducks down to kiss him, and shifts all her weight to one hand so the other can reach between them and align their bodies as necessary. 

"It was in a book," she says, huge eyes fluttering a little as she sinks slowly, so slowly, down his length. "I found it in the library, in _our_ library - it's full of the filthiest things, and I think that we ought to try every single one of them."

She sits upright again, the whole arc of her shifted by the balance of her weight on him, by the weight of him inside her, and peels her nightgown over her head.

"I quite liked the bits about  _restraint_ ," she says, locking her fingers through his upraised hands as she begins to move. Her cheeks are pink, and so are her nipples, and James wishes he could sit up to kiss her pretty breasts, but he's lost in the vision she presents, in the tight slide of her up and down his cock, and cannot move except to lift his hips to meet her every descent. "I think we ought to try that next."

James has no idea what Elizabeth means by restraint, but if it involves her throwing back her head and laughing as she guides his hand to her cunt, so he can bring her to her peak, then he looks forward to it. He so loves watching her laugh.

 

* * *

 

James discovers just what Elizabeth means by  _restraint_ not a week later, when he arrives in bed to find her tugging a slipknot tight around her wrists with her teeth.

"Help me?" she asks, holding out her hands before her, innocent as the Virgin Mary. "I want to try."

"This will leave marks," he says, not moving toward her for fear of what he might do - the length of silk is deep blue against her pale wrists, and he wants to... He doesn't even know what it is he wants, which makes it even worse! "It could  _hurt_ you."

"I trust you," she says firmly, "to always keep my well-being at the very forefront of your mind."

He stretches her out across the bed, makes note of the dark green spine of this  _book_ of hers, and then forgets everything but the length of her, pale and lovely and  _his_ , his to explore uninterrupted because her hands are tied to the headboard, out of the way.

Oh. Oh, perhaps that is the attraction. 

Her body feels different under his mouth, without her hands tugging at his hair, and when he kisses under her pert breasts and down her stomach, softer now than it was when they wed because he cannot help but indulge her sweet tooth, and lower still, breathing hard against her thighs as he nudges them wide with his shoulders, it is heaven. She can do nothing but squeeze with her thighs, cannot direct him except with urgent bucks of her hips, with  _begging,_ and James thinks he might spill all over the bedsheets before he even gets inside her if she keeps this up for much longer. 

She peaks on his tongue with a shout, raw and lovely, and then pleads with him to untie her hands, so he does, and then her hands are  _everywhere_ and he is underneath her, and it is glorious.

 _She_ is glorious.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up to something slightly beyond pleasure.

Elizabeth's hair is always tangled after sleep - she is restless, always restless, dreaming of all that she imagines  _freedom_ to be - and now, it is tangled across his thighs, his belly, through his fingers.

Her mouth is pink, and soft, and stretched around him. Her cheeks are even pinker, the pink of embarrassment, but her eyes are sharp and fierce, and he stays pinned down to the pillows, when she fixes him there with a glance.

"Oh," he manages, when she sucks as hard as she can and digs her sharp nails into his hips to hold him steady - he is tied tighter than ever she was, with satin ropes around her narrow wrists, simply because he is, as always, helpless before her.

He cries out her name, back arching and legs trembling, but his hips never lift an inch from the bed. Later, he will be embarrassed by that, but for now he is only overwhelmed, and achingly thankful.

 

* * *

 

 

There is a mezzanine, looking out over the ballroom in their beautiful house. It is accessible only from the same hallway as their bedrooms, as their studies and Elizabeth's dressing room, and is therefore used only by them, really, on insufferably hot nights when the vast space of the ballroom below allows for some stir of air that the rest of the house, though spacious and lovely, does not. James has often carried Elizabeth to bed, after she has fallen asleep on the chaise on the mezzanine, and is completely nonplussed when she summons him there, in the middle of the ball for her twenty-third birthday.

They throw more balls than some of the matrons think are proper, he knows, but those same matrons whisper snide remarks about their lack of children, that Elizabeth's notorious adventure with the pirate Sparrow ruined her in more than just reputation, and James would do anything to throw his and Elizabeth's happiness back at those vicious old women. Elizabeth is still so young, so glorious, and they have acres of time for children yet. 

They have only just started to enjoy one another, after all.

"I have a surprise for you," she whispers, drawing him to the thick, shining red railing of polished tamarind that kept them from the long drop to the matching floor so far below. Her hair is powdered just a little tonight, and the smell of that undercuts the dense salt-floral of her perfume, which is rich and sharp and  _daring_ in a way the matrons doubtless think outrageous, as they surely think her adornment-free neckline is, and the slightly too full skirts of her deep green gown - a daring colour, given that the vogue is so much for soft spring colours at the moment, but Elizabeth cares little for trends. 

"It is your birthday," he whispers in response, a thrill spearing through him when she pressed close and slips her hand under the hem of his waistcoat. "Surely I ought to be the one surprising you?"

She laughs, other hand coming up to trace the braiding on the front of his coat, mouth tipping up to press a lingering, sucking kiss to his Adam's apple.

"Why don't you just  _indulge_ me instead?" she suggests, loosening his buttons one at a time, until he thinks to catch her wrist and tug her hand away. "It is my birthday, after all."

Her mouth is hot with wine, and maybe a little rum, and he is drunk on her in a moment. She huffs, a laugh or surprise, when he presses her against the rail, and he does not even realise his hat is gone until he near trips over it, trying to move her from the railing to the wall.

"No," she whispers, holding him close by a fistful of waistcoat. "Not the wall -  _here._ "

" _Elizabeth!"_ he gasps, and she kisses him again to quiet his protests. 

"My hoop," she breathes against his temple, when he turns his face into her soft neck to muffle a moan. "It's collapsible, James, it folds in on itself, so if you-"

"Not  _here_ ," he insists, striving for a control he knows is far beyond his reach. How can he deny her this, when he is so powerless to deny her anything else?

"Yes,  _here,_ " she insists in turn. "The book says that the risk of being discovered heightens the pleasure, and I- do you not agree?"

He can hardly say no, when he is already rocking against what little give there is in her firm skirts, and he shakes under her gentle, questing hands as they skate over his back and shoulders, seeking to calm him, to sooth him.

"Turn around," he manages, stepping away from her just enough so he can bend and catch her skirts and the lowest edge of her hoop and gather the whole lot in a ruffled arc, exposing her linen shift, so plain and practical under all that damask. "Lord Above, Elizabeth."

"Touch me," she orders, and he does, stepping close once more so he can wrap an arm around her waist and use that to hold her skirts out of the way of his other hand, which has far more important business.

She is slick already, under his touch, and throbs around his fingers when he lets his teeth catch on the shell of her ear.

Below them, the ball rages on, but he sees it only as a distant swirl of colour - Elizabeth, like this, is too real, too complete, and fills his whole world. The idea that someone need only look up to catch a glimpse of her face pleasure-flushed and twisted with wanting makes his blood boil, makes him  _need_ rather than  _want._

"Now," she whispers, reaching back with one clumsy hand to fiddle at his breeches, reaching down to touch herself when he removes his hand to release his manhood, and she spreads herself, pale fingers and wedding ring bright in the shadow her skirts, when he nears. "James,  _please."_

She so rarely pleads - it is usually him begging - that he pushes in almost too hard, almost too fast, and she claps that same busy hand over her mouth to keep herself from crying out. He only just keeps from biting into her shoulder, where it is exposed by her wide neckline, and instead clenches his jaw and throws his head back, biting down on a shout that would draw every eye in the ballroom to the mezzanine.

"This book," he grits out, hips still locked to hers, "is  _banned_."

"You're loving every page of it," she teases back, breathless and glorious, and he rolls up into her just right to make her whimper. "James, I need-"

"I know," he says, pressing as close as he can get with her skirts and hoop in the way, kissing soft behind her ear and rocking, slowly, as slowly as he can.

Before long, it is fast, and hard, and they are both desperately striving for quiet, and missing it by a hair's breadth. Elizabeth's whimpers are sweet, sweeter than the music he can half-hear from the party below, and his own moans are nearer to growls, desperate and raw in a way that would shock him, had he the presence of mind to be anything beyond  _hungry._

It takes him a moment to let go of the railing, his hand white-knuckled and wedding-ringed beside Elizabeth's, the same, and then his fingers slide against her once more, tease the ripeness of her to peaking, and he thinks he might die from forcing back his own cry of pleasure as she traps hers in her throat and groans, so filthy. 

Elizabeth releases the railing before he has lifted his brow from her shoulder, and touches his face.

"What a lovely birthday present," she says, as though their pleasure is not slickening her thighs. "Perhaps you will make excuses for me for a moment, while I attend to my toilette?"

Her grin is a vicious thing of confidences and affection, and James floats helpless in her wake as he wonders how best to confiscate that damnable book of hers.

 

* * *

 

 

She comes to his bed almost every night - not always for pleasure, sometimes just for sleep, and he can usually tell which she has in mind when she walks through his door.

She wears the robe the same colour as his uniform coat when it is for pleasure, because she knows how well he likes to see her in  _his_ colour. She is wearing it tonight, with her sunbleached hair as golden against it as all the braiding and buttons on his coat. 

"I worry a little," she says, hesitant as she so rarely is when she sits on the far edge of the bed from him. "That I am not what you wanted in a wife."

He laughs, because all he has wanted in a wife for as long as he has understood her to be a woman, rather than  _Miss Swann_ , is  _her._ Surely she knows that?

"I didn't mean to upset you, with the book," she says. "I only - well, I worry that I am not pleasing in the typical sense, so I thought that I ought to find other ways to be pleasing."

"No woman could ever please me as much as you," he tells her, firm and steady as a wind-full sail. "In the typical sense, or any other."

Her smile is so soft, a whisper of pride that warms him as much as the weight of her on his chest.

"I quite like it, you know," she whispers. "When we- when we lie together the normal way."

"Is that so," James manages, because he's been denied the vision of her foggy-eyed and clinging beneath him for _weeks_ now, and wants it terribly.

"It doesn't  _have_ to be odd to be pleasant," she says, turning her head up to look him in the eye, "I promise."

"I think," he says, slowly, carefully, "that we ought to try it the  _normal way,_ just to be sure."

She laughs, and he delights in it. He so loves watching her laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a commission for [snowbryneich](http://snowbryneich.tumblr.com) on tumblr - hope you enjoyed!


End file.
